The other day I was putting a barrette in my daughter's hair when my son -- her twin 2 1/2-year-old brother -- handed me the pink one and said, "For me." I put it in his hair and he wore it most of the day, never fussing with it like his sister does who usually keeps it in for five minutes before ripping it off. Of course this made me think of the whole J.Crew pink toenails boy-gate last year and the questionable outrage over it. But then I remembered that we do live in a country where people of the same sex are banned from getting married in some states.

Then I heard about Sweden who recently came up with a new gender neutral word. The pronouns "he" and "she" (in Swedish "han" and "hon") are now known as "hen." Toy company Leklust is on-board with their latest catalog, too. The Swedes are considered a leader in gay rights and same sex marriages have been legal in the whole country since 2009.

Good for the Swedes! Why are the rest of us so uptight?

I have joked a time or two with new mom friends that it would be glorious if we could leave the hospital for a few days after delivering a baby just to recover while the nurses in the maternity ward take care of the child. Never again. For one mom in Greece, the joke has become a reality!

According to reports out of the country that's quickly becoming infamous for financial instability, one new mom didn't have enough money to pay for her C-section. So the hospital decided to hold her newborn baby hostage until she came up with the cash!

Motherhood is hard work. I don't care who you are -- parenthood (yep, looking at the dads, too) is tough stuff and we all make mistakes. Okay, so some of those mistakes are really, really bad ones and are more than just mistakes. I'm not going to point fingers, but you know what I'm talking about. But some mistakes are the result of a lack of sleep and a seemingly desperate situation. That's what I think happened with Natalie Akselrod, a mom of 6-month-old twins who was arrested after she left her sleeping babies in the minivan strapped in their car seats so she could run into the drugstore to drop off a prescription.

Her minivan, however, was left in neutral and when she went into the store, it rolled out of its spot and nearly crashed into another car.

If you've seen the video of the baby who was placed in a washing machine that accidentally got turned on, you might find it hard to believe that story could get much worse. Oh, but it can ... or at least more twisted.

Original reports said it was the baby's father who placed him in the machine as a joke. When he shut the door, the machine turned on, and footage shows 1-year-old Saimeir Bush being thrown around inside the machine for more than a minute before a worker finally freed him. Fortunately, the baby was somehow fine, but it was such a horrific example of bad parental judgement that we all chided these irresponsible parents.

Only now, it appears there may have been no parents involved. 

A mom named Ashley Sanchez was feeding her 3-month-old baby, Ashlynn, when the unthinkable happened -- the baby turned pale and her eyes rolled back into her head because she had stopped breathing. But instead of screaming and starting to panic, Ashley leapt into action and immediately started performing CPR on her daughter, and even continued the process on the ride over to the hospital.

When they got there, baby Ashlynn did not have a pulse or heartbeat, but because Ashley was quick on her feet and started CPR right away, doctors were able to revive the baby successfully. She was then airlifted to another hospital, and was ultimately diagnosed with viral pneumonia. She miraculously survived, but only because of her mother's brave actions.

I know we have all been waiting breathlessly for Snooki to announce the sex of her baby, and now she has! Snooki will be expecting a little bambino. That's boy, in non-Italian. Snooki told In Touch that she wanted a girl, but that as long as the baby is healthy, she's happy. I sense a collective sigh of disappointment that we won't see a little Snooki, with the garish bejeweled diapers, the wispy baby pouf, and the possible (fake) baby tan. However, there is some good news!

Snooki also says she won't be giving her little bambino a typically weird Hollywood celebrity name. She's going old-school. Snooki and her fiance, Jionni LaValle, may go with either Jionni Jr. or Lorenzo. Good, solid Italian names, both.

But in case Snooki is still considering monikers, here's a few others she might want for her short list ...

Talk about crazy timing. A year and a half after Jillian Michaels announced she was calling it quits as a trainer on The Biggest Loser to pursue motherhood, she finally is a mom. Of twins!

Well, OK, not exactly twins in the two babies born at once who came out of the same tummy sense. I'm talking twins in the "arrived at the same time to meet our two new mommies" sense. There are two, count 'em, two adorable kiddos at chez Michaels now. The fates were certainly smiling on her this month! So how did it go down?

Flying the "friendly" skies just got a whole lot less friendly this past week when United announced that they are going to stop allowing parents with small children to board early. Now parents will have to board with their section, even as they clutch car seats, strollers, diaper bags, and the dozen other large-scale items that make traveling with babies such a nightmare.

I am sure many will say suck it up, you don't have to fly, and sure, that may be true. But as a mom, I am disgusted by this. Flying is hard enough for ANYONE, let alone parents with our hands full of things, plus kids. We need the overhead compartments and the extra time to get settled, and this will make it practically impossible for one parent to even consider flying alone with a child.

It's not just that, though. We are also a society. And it says enormous amounts about our society if we treat children badly.